Ahmet Nejat Ozsu, 51, and the Eagle Court docket constructing he is known as dwelling for 15 years.
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It’s David and Goliath, Higher West Facet version.
A lone diehard tenant’s refusal to depart his Manhattan residence is stopping a world actual property growth funding agency from transferring ahead on a $70 million condominium deal involving his constructing.
The renter, 52-year-old Ahmet Nejat Ozsu, says he's legally entitled to proceed dwelling in his residence of 15 years. His new landlord, the Naftali Group, disagrees, and is now suing Ozsu and his lawyer for greater than $25 million in response to their resistance and protection of it.
“He has a authorized proper to remain on the premises below ERAP,” Ozsu’s lawyer, Adam Leitman Bailey, instructed The Submit of New York State’s pandemic-era Emergency Rental Help Program, below which Ozsu could also be allowed to dwell within the unit for an additional full yr or extra.
“Sadly, the owner hasn’t accepted this,” Leitman Bailey continued.
As an alternative, he stated, the developer has allegedly put in a loud fan (for the only objective of constructing an irritating din) and a safety digital camera outdoors his door, stripped the ground of all fireplace security indicators, and employed employees to yell and spit at him when he exits and enters the constructing, all for the only objective of constructing Ozsu’s life at 215 W. 84th St. insufferable.
“Although he’s pulling down the constructing, he has finished building immediately reverse his dwelling on daily basis,” Leitman Bailey added.
The Naftali Group bought the 128-apartment constructing for $70 million final June, and whereas they’ve but to file for brand spanking new building permits, native zoning professional and concrete planner George M. Janes instructed the New York Instances a whole demolition adopted by the development of a brand new residential tower is the most probably situation.
“The present circumstance at 215 W. 84th St. represents a holdover state of affairs, the place a singular tenant occupying a market-rate residence has not revered his contractual obligations after his month-to-month lease was lawfully terminated in December of 2021,” Y. David Scharf, the chairman of legislation agency Morrison Cohen, which is representing the developer, instructed The Submit in a press release. “Whereas the constructing proprietor respects the rights of tenants, particularly because it pertains to the present applications in place for rental help in New York Metropolis, that is utterly not the case right here.”
Ozsu filed for ERAP after his market-rate, month-to-month lease expired in December, Scharf claimed, noting that Ozsu was not singled out: Each constructing tenant was served a termination discover. As nicely, Ozsu has been nonresponsive to a suggestion of comparable house at a comparable hire for 2 years and as a substitute biding his time in hopes of receiving a seven-figure payout, an insider with information of the state of affairs instructed The Submit.
“I've the correct to be right here,” Ozsu insisted to the Instances of himself and his 13-year-old boxer-mix Penelope’s occupation of his 700-square-foot, $3,350 top-floor one bed room, which boasts a non-public balcony. “And I've no place to go.”
For years Ozsu labored as a software program engineer, however has been unemployed for a while now, and owes roughly $13,600 in again hire.
Now, along with the lack of his job and imminent lack of his residence, he’s additionally coping with a $25 million lawsuit Naftali not too long ago filed in opposition to him. A Naftali lawyer not a part of that litigation can be now personally suing Leitman Bailey.
“I’ve by no means gotten that in 27 years,” he instructed The Submit.
Scharf stated that swimsuit is in response to Leitman Bailey performing unethically in the direction of the constructing house owners.
If the state of affairs sounds ridiculous, even by the insane requirements of New York Metropolis actual property drama, Leitman Bailey stated, it’s as a result of it's: “I largely signify builders. [Ozsu] was really useful to me by a developer who was disgusted that Naftali was making different builders look dangerous.”
He’s not even personally “a fan” of many tenant safety legal guidelines handed by the state legislature. “I’m a capitalist,” he proudly declared, “however I've to comply with them, as a result of they’re New York legal guidelines.”
Naftali, in the meantime, has “determined that they’re going to skirt them and bully and harass [Ozsu] out of the constructing as a substitute of respecting his proper to dwell there below the present legal guidelines that exist,” he stated. “My consumer is actually candy and harmless, and he’s dwelling in concern.”
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